Cradle of Filth

Yaz stands amongst the carnage, grinning and wiping the blood off his scimitar as he watches the mosquito finish off the blood of the priest before it moves on to snack on another of the ratman corpses.

Gronk rises slowly from his coughing fit. Seeing the mosquitoes preying on the ratmen only intensifies his fear of the beasts. He hefts Thunder in front of him and moves to put a little distance between himself and the insects.

"The northern side of the corridor's just the same as the east and west ones," he says as he sees everyone looking at each other before they decide what to do next. "There's one door on the southern wall and three to the north."

"So where to now?"

Jihan is investigating the wall to the west of them:

"It has the same design as the one in the northern wall of the southern corridor," he says as he investigates it carefully. "A group of hooded priests all bowing down in praise of something emerging from a pentagram on the floor."

He then studies the door a little more carefully:

"It looks as if it has some sort of glyph protecting it as well."

He then wanders off and checks out all of the doors leading into the center of the level:

"All four doors are the same," he reports upon his return. "They all have the same design and they are all guarded by glyphs."

Will's chest rapidly rises and falls from the exertion, then slowly begins to return to normal as he stands amid the carnage and looks around:

"Good question, which door do we choose?"

Winnacer, still busy clearing his scratchy throat, answers Will's question:

"It's not which door, it's how many doors do we wish to enter from. Or better yet, how many of these glyphs can we bypass?"

Will is of the belief that the doors to the central area are the only glyph protected doors:

"So you are suggesting entering the central chamber? As good a choice as any, but how do we render the glyphs powerless?"

Bennett, spits upon the massacred rats, then steps to the fore once again:

"Dammit! I am going to get a piece of someone in this godforsaken place!"

He then, ignoring the others, starts walking off down the hall they approached down, checking out the doors. He looks first at the large bronze doors in the west wall, but sees, as Jihan did, that they are protected by a glyph. Not so mad as to risk whatever penalty there is from disturbing the glyph, he carries on down the corridor and tries the southernmost of the two doors. Seeing no glyph or traps, he tries the handle of the door, only to find it locked. He pushes down upon the handle with all of his might, but his attempt to open the door is futile.

His eyes start to glow a little with rage and frustration as he hefts 'Regret' from his back and hacks into the door with all of his might. The axehead embeds itself in the wood of the door, but the blow makes little impact upon it, as the wood is thick. Bennett pulls the axe out of the door and hurls the axe into the door once more again and again, seemingly oblivious to those around him.

This continues for several minutes as the others simply watch on as Bennett continues to hack away at the door, making precious little impact on it.

Eventually, Winnacer tries to lay a calming hand on Bennett's shoulder as he tries to hack through the door next to him:

"Hang on a second, big guy. Let's do this by the numbers. We've got four doors that all seem to lead to what I'd bet is some sort of inner sanctum. If we charge through one, whatever is inside will be able to focus their spells at that one point. We need to enter from all four points simultaneously...surround them and take them prisoner. Then we can bring them to Justice with cold steel. Don't let your frustration get the best of you."

"He's only talking about the wooden outside doors, Winn," Yaz interjects. "I don't think we're gettin' through the bronze doors without knowing some password. Unless Maire's got magic that does it."

Faewen'il does not react at all to the mention of her former name. Ever since Aneira's healing brought her out of her unconscious condition, the magess has not uttered a word, and only the guidance of Jihan and Aneira has kept her moving with the rest of them. Throughout the showdown with the ratmen, she simply looked on without emotion through dull eyes, not reacting to the combat at all.

Her condition seems almost akin to that of Bekkah upon her rescue back at the gnomish village.

Bennett looks at Winnacer, the mentioned frustration obvious, glares, then walks away, mumbling:

"Just want to get it over with. Tired of this place. Want nice breathable air, a good beer. Just tired."

He sags a bit, but meanders over toward the nearest door and calls out:

"Say the word, Winn."

His voice is half-hearted to say the least.

Yaz corrals the two remaining mosquitoes and orders them to "guard" at the bottom of the stairway, then returns to help Bennett open the wooden doors:

"We should check them all before trying the big ones... We might find something to help us. Or someone."

"Quite right," agrees Jihan. "Let me see if I can get through this lock with my lockpicking skills first of all before we try to continue with more unsubtle and time-consuming ways."

With that, he takes out his lockpicking tools once again and kneels before the door in order to start work upon opening it. He spends five minutes upon the task before standing up and shaking his head:

"I'm sorry," he says looking around at everyone, particularly Bennett, "but this door is beyond my meager talents."

"Not to worry," Winnacer says in response. "We can perhaps try and get through it in some other way. Let's try each of the doors on the outside of the perimeter and see which we are able to get through easily."

Jihan nods and leads the party northwards up the corridor to the other door. He repeats the operation on the next door, and proceeds to fiddle around with his tools for another five minutes. Once again, he eventually shakes his head in defeat before getting up and leading the party around the corner to start on the doors on the northern side of the perimeter.

As with the previous two doors, Jihan starts upon the next door by checking carefully for traps. Upon finding none, he then produces his brass listening cone and listens at the door. Unlike the previous doors, behind which the elf heard nothing, his eyebrows raise as he listens at this one:

"It sounds like there are some kind of animals behind the door," Jihan reports. "They don't sound very friendly either, as they seemed to be snarling and fighting with each other."

Winnacer shakes his head at this:

"Well, I don't think that we want to fight anything more than we have to at the moment," he says. "Perhaps it might be better to come back to this one later."

Jihan nods and continues on to the door in the center of the northern wall. Once again, he checks for traps and finds none and so proceeds to listening at the door. Once again, he raises his eyebrows in surprise before reporting his findings:

"I hear sobbing behind this door," he announces, with a look of concern writ large upon his voice. "The sound of womenfolk crying."

"Looks like we found the captives," Kokal says, "some of 'em at least."

There are sighs of relief all round at this news, but then Winnacer interjects:

"Although I am as anxious to get the captives to safety as we all are, I think that it is perhaps dangerous to free them before we have dealt with all of the threats that we have left to face."

He turns to Jihan:

"How many of them do you think there are?"

Jihan picks up his listening cone once again and has another listen:

"It's hard to say for sure," he reports, "but I would say that there are quite a few of them."

Winnacer nods:

"I'm sorry, but I think that we'd put them at too much risk were we to free them at the moment. Hopefully, we can see to them immediately after we have dealt with the remaining threats. They will be safer where they are for the moment."

Reluctantly in many cases, the others agree and so Jihan carries on to the next room. He goes through the same routine as before and this time his eyebrows raise even higher as he listens:

"More womenfolk in this room," Jihan reports, "but that's not what's surprising. The surprising fact is that they seem to be laughing and chatting with each other."

"Laughing?" Will questions.

"That's right," Jihan replies, nodding. "They seem to be having a rather jolly time in there."

Winnacer looks a little confused at this:

"Well, once again I think we should leave them be for the moment, especially if they seem not to be in any great distress. Let us check upon the remaining three doors and then make our decisions as to what we should do next at that point."

They agree and so round the next corner and start off with the door in the northwest corner of the floor. Jihan goes through his regular routine, but this time his attempts at listening at the door reveals only silence. He then tries the handle of the door and finds that it is unlocked. While the warriors stand by with weapons poised, Jihan opens the door a little and peers in.

His nose alerts him to what's inside the room before his eyes do, however:

"Euuuurrrgghhhh," the elf exclaims as he gets a whiff of the pungent stench inside, "more ratman barracks."

He opens the door wide and the party can see that the room appears to be the same as the two rooms in the level below, in that the room is covered in twigs, straw and rancid ratman droppings. Once again, they try not to breathe too deeply as they enter the room, before Jihan leads the search to see if there is anything to be found within the filth upon the floor. Apart from Jihan, no one is terribly enthusiastic about the task and they are delighted when the elf finally calls off the search:

"No, there doesn't appear to be anything here," Jihan summizes.

"However, perhaps there is something behind that door over there," he says pointing to a door in the northern wall.

Jihan walks through the filth towards the door and goes through his regular routine. Once again there are no obvious traps and no sound from behind the door. He tries the door and, once more, finds that it is open. Cautiously, he pushes it open and finds that it is a small room that also stinks quite badly, but to nowhere near the same extent as the outer room. They can see that, as opposed to the nests in the room that they are standing in, the room seems to resemble more regular living quarters, in that it has a crude bed in it, as well as a roughly constructed table. Upon the table is a statuette of an evil looking creature that has the legs of a cloven beast and the torso and head of a rat, but with the addition of some long, curved horns. The rat is standing upon a piece of purplish colored stone unlike any that they have seen before, that seems to glow a little in the darkness. Incense is burning from a container placed before the statue and those of them that get too close to it start to cough before stepping back away from it.

Winnacer stares at the evil looking statue, eventually closing his eyes and calling upon higher judgement.

Jihan looks around the room, looking over at the statue:

"These must be the quarters of the ratpriest that we killed earlier," the elf says as he looks at the statue. "That statue looks quite valuable from here. It's made of silver and so I would estimate that it is worth around 750 gold pieces if it is solid."

"Do you think we should take it?" he asks, looking around at the rest of them.

Will speaks while considering the statuette:

"I don't like the look of that stone it's standing on, I personally would not want to touch it."

Winnacer's eyes show exactly what he thinks about it:

"It must be destroyed," he speaks as if there was no other choice.

Once the decision has been made, and they have investigated under the bed, to find that there is nothing there, they see that there is a door on the east wall. Jihan investigates it and deduces that it is untrapped and that there is nothing living inside the room. He tries the door and finds that, this time, the door is locked.

Wearily, the elf produces his lockpicking kit once again and sets to work upon the lock:

"I've got to be able to get through one of these locks sooner or later," the elf says hopefully.

His words are true and, to his delight, he manages to open the lock after just a couple of minutes of fiddling with it. He opens the door and sees that it is a very small room, which seems to be used for storage. Looking at the contents, he sees that the room is some kind of an armory, as it contains several shortswords, around twenty in total, plus eight halberds. In addition to the more regular type of weaponry, they can also see that it contains one of the large flails that the flailbearers used to keep the party at bay earlier and that there is also another of the flame-throwers that the ratmen used. Having time to investigate it closely, they can see that the flame-thrower is a huge and cumbersome item. One part of it is a thick, heavy hose-pipe that is encased in metal, which leads to two barrels which are joined together by pipes. It looks as if even the strongest among the party are going to struggle to bear the weight of the hefty device on their own.

More curious still is the fact that there is a firearm in the room standing alongside the flame-thrower. Even though few of them have ever seen firearms before, they know enough about them to know that this is a particularly huge example, as the firearm is some 8' long from end to end. As with the flame-thrower, it looks bigger than any one of them would be able to wield on their own. Alongside the firearm is a long staff that has a notch at the end, obviously a rest for the firearm, plus a large ramrod. There are also 10 matches with it, as this is a matchlock weapon, and a small sack resting against it. Jihan opens the sack and sees that it contains a quantity of large rounded stones made from the same purplish tinted rock that they saw comprised the base of the statue, around 20 in total.

"I ain't seen nothin' 'at big 'fore," Gronk says. "Make a good weapon ta defend a village with I'd guess."

Winnacer peers at the purple rocks in wonderment, again falling to Spravedelna to pass judgement.

"I think we've just found our keys to open some of these doors," the young Lord adds. "However, I would recommend caution to any who choose to handle them. These rocks are definitely unnatural and I am not able to tell whether or not they are safe to touch."

He adds as an afterthought:

"I wonder what these rocks do when they impact. They must do something, they are too irregular to make good bullets otherwise."

He lets his eyes fall on the flamethrowing contraption:

"You know, we may want to give this thing a try. Perhaps Yaz and Will or Jihan could pair up and use it. It would be best to turn it upon our enemies than to simply blow it up at this point. Although it may be the only way through one of those doors."

Continuing to look inside the room, they see that there are also two chests, one large and one small. Jihan investigates both of the chests and sees that neither of them appears to be trapped. He tries the lock on both of the chests and finds that they are both locked. He tries to pick the lock of the large one first of all, but finds after not too long that it is beyond his lockpicking skills. He goes on to the second one, but the result is the same, and he finds it impossible to pick that one either. They can see that the boxes are both made of wood and wouldn't put up much resistance if one were to try and force the boxes open.

"Perhaps it would be best to bring them back to Mirek and Marek to watch before we open them at our leisure. I'm not too keen about tasting any more gas today."

There are no more exits from the ratmen's quarters apparent, and so they return to the corridor, where Jihan checks out the door in the center of the western wall. After his regular checks, Jihan deduces that there is nothing behind the doors and so tries the handle. To his relief, he finds that it is open and so cautiously opens the door. The room before them is a fairly small one that is sparsely furnished with a couple of tables. Upon the tables are plates containing half-eaten meals. Also in the room are a couple of moth-eaten looking armchairs and a sofa around a low table. It appears to be the priests' dining and recreation room.

There are doors in the western and southern walls. Jihan tries the western door first and finds that it is untrapped and unlocked. Upon entering the room, he sees that it is a kitchen area, containing several tables upon which foodstuffs are located, several large cupboards and a large stove, upon which a cauldron is boiling. Jihan walks over and takes a look inside the cauldron .. . and immediately regrets it.

Inside the cauldron is a baby girl.

In the split-second between Jihan's seeing the horrendous sight and collapsing to the floor and throwing up in revulsion, he saw that the baby was either elven or human and must have been three or four months old. The baby was bright red in color, obviously having been on the boil for several hours to ensure that she is totally tender. Her eyes and mouth are wide open in agony, probably as a result of her being boiled alive.

Jihan just kneels on the floor for a while, his face a picture of total shock and revulsion. He is just too stunned to speak or even shed a tear at the shocking sight that he witnessed.

"Bastards!" Gronk yells as he turns to leave the kitchen after the impact of the scene hits him. "I be eatin' 'em bastard's hearts 'fore da days over."

Gronk goes straight to the nearest of the inner, glyphed doors and tries to open it.

Winnacer grits his teeth and tightens his grip upon his sword until he cannot feel his fingers with Jihan's revelation. He goes quiet, lost in a silent fury, and does not see Gronk storm off....

Gronk finds that the door is not locked as he tries to open it, but as he pulls open the door a crack, the dwarf screams out as he enveloped by a purplish flash and the hairs on his head and beard all stand on end. Before he can let go of the handle, the sparks that run through his body light up the corridor with a flickering purple light. As he grits his teeth to fight off the pain, he is thrown back by the force of the electricity and hits the opposite wall of the corridor from the force of the recoil.

He lies on the floor stunned for a moment, but then manages to pick himself up, feeling dazed and very badly damaged from the voltage that has past through his frame. His chainmail and clothing are smoldering as a result of the heat that the electricity generated.

The Padre rushes up to him as he sees Gronk staggering to get up, purple sparks still flickering over his body as the electricity finally subsides. Kokal examines Gronk carefully, shaking his head as he does so:

"Ye're lucky to be alive still, Gronk," he says in his usual happy tone. "That blast would 'ave killed a normal man. Still, ye're badly burned and ye're not going to be able to take much more damage today."

"Least I got the door open," Gronk says between clenched teeth.

Gronk shakes his head as he regains his bearings. He takes a quick look at himself and screws up his face as the smell of his own charred flesh reaches his nose.

Xavier looks towards the dwarf with astonishment.

"Yah poor bastard. Such punishment an' yer come back for more. Your kind must surely be made of stone!"

Xavier strides over to the dwarf and offers him his hand to help him to his feet.

"I ain't quite sure what I be made of," Gronk comments. "I just knows it be takin' more 'an bein' frozen, set on fire, or struck by lightnin' ta be killin' me."

In the way of warriors, Xavier replies to this gallows humor with laughter, not so much from amusement but by the release of pent-up tension over the past hours.

"Yah, dat be so true, mein freund. Der sky could fall on der head and you vould bounce back up onto thy feet, cursing the bloody heavens for being so uncooperative."

Xavier hands the unsteady dwarf back his helmet, with a smile on his face.

"Rodengast be praised vhen ve at last put a torch to this cursed place and leave it smoldering in ruins. If hell exists, it vould be this damned place!"

Looking at the door, they all can see that it is now opened by a crack. From where they are, they cannot make out much of what is inside apart from the fact that the room is mainly dark, but is lit by flickering torches.

Winnacer is besides himself with wrath at seeing Gronk's zapping on top of the horrors which he witnessed in the kitchen.

He stammers for a few seconds before finding proper words:

"This....this is too sickening to let exist for even a second longer...it...it...it all needs to be purged....right now. Spravedelna shall not allow this to pass unjudged..."

He takes a deep breath, and reaches to push back his hair despite it being safely tucked under his metal cap. He finds his resolve and continues.

"With the weapons we found, we can blast down each door, or at least destroy the locking mechanisms. We'll blast each door we need to, then turn their fire-thrower on whatever may linger within. This place shall be cleansed by flames, as only the charred scar of this place should remain as a marker that such horrors occured here"

"Let us free the captives now and send them up the stairs to freedom. Those that eat the newborn and nest in their own feces may try to slaughter those left behind out of spite. They'll be safer above, as this place shall soon be awash in flames anyway."

Winnacer glances at Faewen'il:

"It may also be best if Fae goes topside as well, at least until she gets her wits about her."

"We only need one left behind to be questioned. Let us not leave too wide a margin from that number."

Kokal nods in agreement:

"Aye, we be needin' to get th' captives to safety, that be sure," he agrees, "an' th' magess be good f'nought in 'er present condition. Mind ye, she isn't the only one. Gronk isn't goin' to last too much longer if 'e gets into a fight. Me neither, and most o' the rest o' ye aren't in much better shape."

"An' to make matters worse, it looks as if us spellcasters ain't 'avin' 'ardly a spell left between the lot of us. We knows that we still have the high priest an' Radegast knows what else t'be facin'. I'm wantin' to get this over with as soon as we can do also, but if we jus' charge on in there an' get ourselves all killed for the want o' waitin' another day, then there'll be no one to stop the bastards from continuin' wit' their hideous crimes."

"So I think we should get the captives t'safety, attend t' our needs an' then finish th'bastards off tomorrow."

"What say the rest o' ye?"

Will nods agreement:

"He speaks true. As much as I want to see this place and all its inhabitants lie in ruin, failure due to lack of preparation and exhaustion is not an option, regardless of how heroic it may be."

He continues, looking at Fae and Winnacer:

"As for Fae, the weight of her personal decision is upon her shoulders and not to be dictated by the group or anyone in it."

The formerly feisty one does not acknowledge the bard's words at all, not blinking as she continues to stare straight ahead, not reacting to anything at all, not even the revelation of the boiled baby earlier.

Winnacer reluctantly agrees with Will and the Padre:

"We are in no shape to continue onwards. Let us see if we can free the prisoners back near the entrance and rest. We should bring the extraneous chests and weapons with us as well."

"I'm right with you on that as well," agrees Yaz, "but I want to go and check on what those animal noises were before we leave."

"Let's put that spike in the chain near the ceiling, then spike the ceiling up," Yaz suggests. "If none of the rest of you want to try the door to the animal pens, I'll try it. We gotta get the captives out of here."

"Before we go back to the doors in the northern wall, I think we might as well check out the last couple of doors that we know about," suggests Will.

"Are you up to the task, Jihan?" he asks the elf.

As he looks towards the elf, who seems to be in a similar state to Fae at the moment, it becomes obvious to Will that Jihan is in no mood for any more investigating for a while. As a result, Will takes over the job of investigating the remainder of the kitchen. He sees that there are large pots of cold gruel lying on shelves around the kitchen. However, not all of the food in the place is slop, as there is a wicker basket of fresh green vegetables resting upon a table, along with some fine haunches of meat, hanging within a large cupboard. In the cupboard next to it, Will has a similar experience to Jihan, as he realizes that the 'meat' that this cupboard contains are actually human body parts, including thighs and breasts, which have previously been smoked over a fire.

With relief, they close the door on the sickening kitchen and continue with their investigations. Jihan is in no mood to carry on searching the level, and so Will takes over. He tries the door to the south and finds that it does not appear to be trapped and that the door is unlocked. He opens it and looks in to see that the room seems to be more quarters for priests.

As was the case with the priests' quarters on the uppermost level, the room is very spartan in nature, containing six very simple beds with lockers at the foot of each of them. Will spends a while looking through the lockers, as none of them are locked. However, he finds that the lockers contain nothing except for spare robes. There are two doors off this room in addition to the door in the east wall, which quite obviously is the final door to the corridor. Will tries the door in the west wall first of all to find that it is open. Looking inside, he sees that the room is simply a midden, which obviously descends down to the watertable, not far beneath the floor.

Closing the door, Will tries the final door, which is in the south wall of the room. He cannot detect any traps upon the door, but when he tries the handle, he finds that the door is locked. He looks over to ask Jihan as to whether he can try and open the door, but can see that Jihan is still in shock from his horrifying discovery in the kitchen and looks to be in no condition for any further lockpicking right at the moment.

Will stands before the final locked door and turns to the rest in the party:

"I believe that will have to do for our scouting activities for today. Let us return to the door behind which we heard the animal noises so that Yaz can investigate further."

They all agree and so head off back towards the door in the northeast corner of the complex. They round the corner of the southern passageway first so that Yaz can check that the mosquitoes are still guarding the bottom of the stairs. They walk over the charred and melted bones of the first company of ratmen as they walk along the passageway and then pass the stairs. Yaz has a quick look down to stairs to see if he can spot the mosquitoes. They are still there as ordered, hopping around in the fetid waters below.

Satisfied that the mosquitoes are still on guard duty, they round the corner and advance back up the eastern corridor, passing by the hacked up bodies of the enrobed ratmen.

As Yaz passes over the now emaciated body of the ratpriest, Yaz stoops and investigates the corpse of the beast. He sees that the priest has two pouches upon his belt. Upon checking the first, he finds that it contains several spell components. As he investigates the second, he starts to smile:

"Aha!" he exclaims. "I thought as much."

With that, he produces a bunch of keys from the pouch, containing three large and two small keys.

"We should have thought of this earlier," Yaz continues. "It would have saved us some time in picking locks. Let's see what they open up. I suppose that they probably just open up the doors to the ratmen's area."

Bypassing the three doors in the northern wall for the moment, Yaz leads the way back to the ratmen's quarters. As he gets to the doorway to the first of the ratmen's area, he tries the large keys to see if they fit in the lock. One of them does. He then carries on through the filth of the ratmen's lair to the door of the ratpriest's quarters. Once again, one of the large keys fits the lock. They all continue through the ratpriest's quarters and Yaz tries the final large key in the lock of the storeroom. Sure enough, it fits.

"It's a shame," Yaz says to himself. "I was hoping that some of them might open up one of the locked doors."

He gives a little shrug and carries on into the storeroom. He then goes to the smaller of the two chests and investigates the locks. He then turns to Jihan:

"You checked these for traps, yeah?"

Jihan, now starting to snap out of his shock, simply nods in response.

Yaz returns his attention to the chest and tries both keys in the lock. Sure enough, one of them fits, and he opens the box:

"Damn," he says as he looks inside. "It's just some more money."

Immediately pushing the chest aside, he starts to investigate the larger of the chests. As he does so, Will takes a look at the money:

"I reckon that there's about 330 gold pieces in there, and three platinums as well."

Yaz ignores him and tries the other key in the lock of the large chest. The key fits and so he opens it:

"Now this is more like it," he says.

You peer into the box and see that it is mostly full of straw. Nestling among the straw, however, you see that there are seven glass globes, which contain a greenish-yellow vapor inside."

"Poison globes," Yaz says as he carefully picks one up in order to investigate it more closely. "Now these could come in handy."

Winnacer frowns:

"Nasty business, that poison. Too fragile to be carried safely, too temperamental to be reliable. Be careful with it if we decide not to destroy it out of hand."

Winnacer then turns to the giant rifle:

"On the other hand..."

"Could someone give me a hand with this?" he asks of the party.

"I'd be happy to," agrees the Padre. "I be learnin' quite a bit about such weapons, as all Padres of Radegast are taught in th' ways of all weapons o' war. Never actually saw one myself, o' course. The damned Nyemetz would 'ave been down on us all if they thought we 'ad access to one o' these."

Winnacer nods in response:

"My father used to have one," he says with a little embarrassment. "He let me fire it a few times, but Klauf used to make such a fuss about it every time that my father let me touch it that I never became an expert in its use."

Between the Padre and the LawBringer, the pair of them pull the huge weapon out of the storeroom along with its rest, the ramrod, matches, bandoleer of powder charges and the thick sack of purplish stones. They maneuver it into the ratpriest's quarters and then proceed to set it up.

The rest of them watch on with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension as they see Winnacer and Kokal work upon the weapon. Winnacer carefully pours a charge of gunpowder into the barrel and then he carefully takes one of the large purple stones from the sack, thankful that his chainmail gauntlets avoid the need for him to touch the faintly glowing stone with his bare hands. He places the stone in the barrel and the Padre uses the ramrod in order to make sure that the stone is secure. The two of them then lift the barrel on to the rest and Winnacer puts the stock against his shoulder and lights the end of one of the matches from his lantern.

Gronk watches the preparations with interest, but is still recovering from his recent jolt, so does not help setting up the weapon.

The whole exercise has taken more than five minutes and Winnacer's brow is dripping with sweat by the time all is ready. Before he makes to light the pan, he speaks to them all:

"I think it might be best if you were all to wait outside while I try it out," he says. "Powder weapons are unpredictable objects at the best of times, but with this one being of such strange construction, I really fear that anything could happen."

Although they are all curious to see the results of the gun being fired, none of them want to be around if it explodes and so walk out into the stinking room outside. The Padre remains in order to hold the rest steady.

The rest of them wait outside for a couple of minutes until they hear an almighty 'BOOOOMMMMM!!!', the noise of which is even louder than one of Flint's explosions. They immediately walk into the room to see that the room is so thick with dust that they can't see more than a foot in front of them.

As the dust starts to settle a little, they see that Winnacer and the Padre are lying in a heap in the far corner of the room with the gun on top of them. Winnacer groans a little as he gets up:

"We're OK," he says as he sees the concern on their faces. "I expected the gun to have a bit of a recoil, but not THAT much."

The LawBringer and the Padre both stand up and brush the dust off them and then look over through the clearing dust to see the results of their actions. The silver rat statuette that Winn was aiming for has completely disappeared, as he had hoped for. However, that's not all. The table that it was standing on is now no more than sundry pieces of wood scattered around the room. In addition to that, the wall immediately behind the statuette now contains a hole some three feet in diameter and some six feet deep.

"Ohen be praised!" Gronk says. "Thanks ta Ohen an' his mates we gots what we needs ta blast in ta just 'bout anyplace now."

"Wow," is all the LawBringer says at seeing the devastation that the gun caused.

Yaz is a lot less impressed with the weapon than Winnacer is:

"If you've finished playing with your new toy, then I really would like to check on what those animals are in the room."

Winnacer nods in response:

"Of course. If someone could give me a hand to take out the gun and the flame-thrower, it would be appreciated. The chest of poison globes as well."

Xavier and Bennett take the flame-thrower while Gronk picks up the crate of poison globes and Will takes the chest of coins.